


We didn’t need this to love each other, but I’m glad we get to do it anyway

by AidaRonan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - No War, Artist Steve Rogers, Bucky is charming even with false teeth, Fluff, Grandpas Gettin Married, M/M, Marriage, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Wedding Fluff, Weddings, activist Steve, activist bucky, sharon is a good bro, they're even more adorable than they are old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 15:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15911328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidaRonan/pseuds/AidaRonan
Summary: In an alternate universe where they never go to war, Steve and Bucky live a whole lifetime together.They're near the end of the line now, but there's still time to make it official.Or the one where same-sex marriage finally gets legalized in NY and two very old men do the thing.





	We didn’t need this to love each other, but I’m glad we get to do it anyway

Steve Rogers is pretty spry for a man just over 94, especially considering that he'd never thought he’d make it to 30, let alone to a few years shy of a century. He takes the stairs at the court building on Adams Street the same way he does everything else these days, with slow determination. There's an alternative entrance somewhere else, but there are only a handful of steps and he likes his chances well enough between the railing and his cane. And no one would ever call his ascent fast, but he does it. One step at a time until he hits the top.   
  
He’s wearing an old suit that’s just a little too big on him now that he’s lost mass with age. It’s a double-breasted number he picked up in the mid-80s when he finally retired from the art department at Brooklyn College. It’s not as tailored and well-fitting as it could be, but he’s been told navy never goes out of style. And he didn’t have time to rush out and get something new.  
  
He’s waited a long, long time for this, and he’ll be damned if he’s gonna wait another day.  
  
There’s a couple inside the front doors, two women in matching white sundresses kissing right there in the lobby, a rainbow flag draped around their shoulders. A friend snaps photo after photo on a cell phone. There are no frowns in sight.  
  
“We just got married!” one says, breaking the kiss and beaming right at him with tears in her eyes.  
  
“It’s about damn time,” Steve says back, and he means it. He lets the friend press a rainbow pin into his hand when he moves past them.  
  
By the time he's through traffic jam at the metal detectors, he’s pinned it to his lapel with trembling hands. Arthritic fingers straighten it with a little twist, and then he decides that it looked better crooked after all and puts it back.  
  
There’s a line snaking out of the county clerk’s office, a nice security guard kindly asking people to wait here or there.  
  
“Sir, would you like to sit down?” someone asks him. A blonde woman in a smart looking skirt smiles kindly at him. He glances at the laminated badge clipped to her pocket.  
  
“No thank you, Ms. Carter. At my age, if I sit down, I might not get back up.”  
  
“Are you sure?” she asks. “It’s no trouble.”

“He’s the most stubborn old punk in all of Brooklyn, ma’am. Don’t even bother.”  
  
“And he’s the biggest jerk I’ve ever met.” Steve prepares himself before he turns. He knows, of course he knows, what Bucky looks like and what he’s wearing. But they’d agreed to meet here instead of coming together, for the fanfare or something, and Steve wants to be able to savor the first moment he saw his husband on their wedding day for the rest of his life, even if that won’t be too much longer now.

Of course, they’ve gotta actually get married first.  
  
He slowly rotates his old body, starting with his eyes on Bucky’s feet. He’s wearing the old dress shoes that he’s had since the 1970s probably. All shined up to the point where the fluorescent lights overhead reflect little white rectangles on the surface. Gray slacks come next, a pair one of his grand nieces gave him for Christmas a few years back. There’s a plain button-up tucked into those, crisply starched and bleach-white. Then Bucky's favorite jacket—the veritable icing on the cake—a cobalt blue number that makes the blue in Bucky's eyes overpower the gray. Steve stares openly, hoping he can get his old hands to cooperate for one last drawing. Because if ever he needed to commit something to paper, it's this.  
  
Bucky fixes a crooked smile at him, and for a moment all the years melt away and they’re two twenty-somethings sitting in their tenement in Brooklyn. And Bucky’s begging him to dance along to some Gershwin tune and looking at Steve like he’s never loved anything more.

He's still Steve's Bucky after all these years. Even if his teeth are fake and his hair went silver a long time ago. Even if his face is different, a crepe paper road map of the time they’ve spent watching the world change around them.

Steve still remembers when they stopped having to pretend to be roommates and could start telling folks the truth, even if it sometimes got them a look or a slur painted on their apartment door. He can remember Stonewall too. They hadn't been there the first night when things started to change, but they'd gone every night after. Then there'd been Pride, shifting from a determined march into an annual blur of color. Kissing Bucky in broad daylight on a New York City sidewalk. Rallies, and sing-ins, and protests. 

They'd loved each other all those years, even when they had to pretend they didn't. And they'd fought like hell for the right to tell people that they did. For the right of some other scrappy asthmatic from Brooklyn to love his charmer of of a best friend with all their passion and none of their pain.   
  
And now here they are on some random day in July in 2011, a day that is pretty damn unremarkable except now it isn't. History will remember it going forward, and someday someone will see the date of their wedding on an old slip of paper or carved in granite between them at the cemetery, and they'll know why it was today of all days. 

“Told you I’d make an honest man outta ya, Stevie,” Bucky says, putting his hand on Steve’s shoulder. He adjusts the pin on Steve's lapel and squints at it a second before twisting it back to the side. Steve grins. 

“Just glad we stuck around long enough to see it.”

“Knew we would. Pretty sure Death’s already been to visit you a few times and you just told him to fuck right off until you could get me in front of an altar. You know Becca Two calls you a hardheaded old coot.”

“Only because you taught her to," Steve says. "And you, Buck? You tell old Grim to take a hike til we could get hitched?”

“No, but I told him that it wouldn’t be fair to make one of us live without the other. And that if you didn’t have someone to watch your back, he’d probably be busier than he’d like. Steve Rogers, I told him, is a goddamn menace.”

“You’d know.”  
  
“I would, but then I’m the idiot who fell in love with you.”  
  
“And then stayed in love with me.”  
  
“For 77 terrible years that I wouldn't trade for shit. Not even to get the Dodgers back home.”  
  
“Specific.”  
  
“Did the math.”  
  
“You always do.” And it’s true. Of the two of them, Steve had been the one who’d hang a nice painting over the fireplace or decide they needed a peace lily in the corner. Where Bucky had been the one who ran budgets and kept such accurate ledgers of their bank accounts that they’d never bounced a check once in their entire lives. Not on accident anyway. 

Steve glances at a carving of the scales of justice on wall and smiles, first at it and then at Bucky.

The line moves about as fast as any line in a government building can. It's not long before Steve can feel every long minute ticking by in his old bones. At some point, Bucky must feel it too, because he shuffles down the hall and comes back with paper cones full of water.  
  
"Sláinte," Steve says, and they tap their cups together before they both throw back ibuprofen.   
  
They hold hands after that, Steve leaning into Bucky just a little while they move closer and closer to the office. 

Ms. Carter smiles softly at them when they finally make it to the counter. Together, the three of them fill out the marriage license, Carter patiently telling them where to sign and initial. There are name change forms as well if either of them wants to do that.  
  
They do, having decided they'd both take Rogers-Barnes over a decade ago, the two of them tangled up together on the sofa when they decided that their names fit together just a little bit better in that order.   
  
“You sure you don’t wanna go Barnes-Rogers?” Steve asks. “Before this nice young lady files these forms?”

“Gotta save the best for last,” Bucky says. “Are we married yet by the way? Now that those things are signed?”

“There’s usually a 24-hour waiting period before we can do a ceremony here in the office,” Carter says.  
  
“Usually?” Bucky asks.

“We can waive that under special circumstances,” she says.

“Can you now?” And Bucky hits her with the same smile he’d used to charm ladies all up and down Brooklyn back in the 40s. “Thing is I’m 95 years old, and I’ve waited over seven decades to marry my Stevie here. Think you can keep two old men from having to come all the way back down here again tomorrow?”  
  
Bucky lays it on thick, pulling Steve close and giving her his best wounded puppy dog look. Carter's lips twitch. 

“One moment, gentlemen,” she says, disappearing through a side door.

Several painfully bureaucratic minutes later, they’re passing each other rings.

“Buck, I told you once that I could get by just fine on my own. I was a lyin little punk then, and I’m glad you didn't let me get away with it. We fought for today, got locked up a few times for today, and here we are. We didn’t need this to love each other, but I’m glad we get to do it anyway. ‘Til the end of the line as always, just legally now.”

“Stevie, you were always getting into it with somebody, but you never did it without a good reason. You’re right. We did fight for this, you harder than a lot of other folks. You deserve today, and I don’t know if I deserve you, but I’ve been working 77 years to try to and I ain’t gonna stop now. ‘Til the end of the line, pal. Then and now.”

They kiss to a quiet round of applause from some of the other waiting couples. Then they're done, just like that, walking down the hall as Mr. and Mr. Rogers-Barnes, a few papers in hand that they both bled for more than once. 

“Wait,” Steve says, pausing in the lobby. He untucks himself from under Bucky's arm. “Do you have that infernal contraption on you?”

“Jesus, Stevie, how old _are_ you?” Bucky teases, but he pulls out his shiny new iPhone just the same. Another gift from one of the girls.

“Ma’am,” Stevie says, stopping a woman in her tracks. “Would you take a picture of us?”  
  
“We just got married,” Bucky tacks on, practically bouncing. 

She sets her briefcase down by her feet and gracefully accepts the task, snapping a few photos of them standing side-by-side, a few more of them holding up their marriage certificate.  
  
The last photo she takes goes up on the wall right by the fancy little document that declares them legally bound for life. In it, Steve has both of his wrinkled old hands on Bucky’s cheeks, and he’s kissing him like they’re teenagers hiding under the pier at Coney Island. Like they're roommates glancing at the window to make sure the shade really is drawn. Like they're an old couple at a pride parade, finally able to be who they've always been. No more hiding. 

Even if Steve somehow makes it another 94 years, he doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of looking at it.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm pretty sure like almost no same-sex couple who wanted to get married that day was told they genuinely had to come back in 24 hours. Like unless they were planning a ceremony somewhere or knew about the waiting period and were gonna have friends or family show up or something, they got a waiver. Sharon is a bi with a soft spot, okay? 
> 
> But you know, let Bucky think he charmed her into it. He's a very precious old man and he probably could've. 
> 
> What else? Bucky engineered civilian aircrafts before he retired. Becca Two is Becca One's granddaughter and Becca One gave Bucky a lot of good-natured shit for calling them Becca One and Becca Two after Becca Two was born. Steve and Bucky never had kids of their own for obvious reasons, so they spoiled the crap out of all of Bucky's nieces and grand nieces. They really couldn't wait to get married, not even to gather all the "kids," but there will definitely be a Huge Family Dinner with an enormous cake. 
> 
> Anyway, please leave comments and/or come yell your Stucky headcanons at me on [Tumblr.](http://bisexualstarbucky.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Or come follow me on I'm on Twitter now too [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/bistarbucky) and we'll both pretend I'm interesting.


End file.
